Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Get Done on the Good Foot

At a time in my life when little or nothing was necessary to stir the courage of my convictions,

I felt particularly oppressed by Martha Stewart. Whether she was

clipping credit cards as a shill for Amex or recycling used paper towels into colorful centerpieces,

her tanned, relaxed face menaced me. I decided to trek eastward to her pristine home, where I could scoop up the real deal,

the dirt that Martha Stewart hides from us all.

Martha Stewart's Dirty Secrets

"I guess that was your accomplice there in the wood chipper?" (Polygram)

I promised something like what has turned into thisdetailedtransactionseries on Ken Williams a year ago, around the trade deadline. But
there’s little room for in-depth writing on the beat, even less for anything
remotely artful.

[The first gamer I ever wrote in Minneapolis was a Fargo pastiche. It was rejected in
typical CSN panic, and then and there I knew that for all the talk of game
stories having gone passé, passé was indeed the order of the day at that stodgy
megacorp of mediocrity.]

At that time, my impression of White Sox GM Ken Williams is
that he was dramatically underrated, and the Moneyball stain on his record was unwarranted, cheap, and inaccurate. As
envisioned in the first in this series, I imagined Williams as so quick and
aggressive, he was sitting pretty, smiling with his prize before another GM realized what hit
him.

While that hasn’t entirely turned out to the be case—Williams has
his soft spots, and generally has “overpaid” to bring wins to town—the notion
that he's an underrated, uncommonly durable and clever GM is now more
firmly rooted to me than before.

Sometime in 2013, I will update this entire series, not only with the additional travails on field and transactions off it to come, but by broadening the scope
of the WAR and WAR/$ study beyond that of just Baseball-Reference. For now,
here’s an updated and revised snapshot of how KW has performed, broken down by
trades and by free agency, followed by a bit of trivia/miscellany regarding his
near-dozen years at the helm.

Trading
Summary

Williams has traded 134 White Sox players and acquired 120.

He’s traded away 136.3 player seasons and acquired 128.

The players dealt went on to accumulate 93.6 WAR, while the
players acquired have provided the White Sox 128.2.

Translating WAR into sheer dollars, Williams has dealt away $363.6
million in talent and acquired $507.5 million.

The traded players went on to earn $244.2 million in salary, while
Williams has paid his acquisitions $408.8 million.

The GM has included $13.9 million in total cash considerations
over 17 trades, while getting back $47.8 million in 14 deals for the White Sox.

Including the commitments to his own players (avoiding
arbitration, extensions, or re-signings), Williams has done an outstanding job
with regard to free agency. Counting all signings,
here’s how the numbers break down:

Williams has signed 115 players and cut 34 loose.

He’s signed 156 player seasons, giving up 42.

He’s acquired 174.5 WAR, surrendering just 28.2.

The dollar value of players he’s signed is $661.5 million, while
allowing $102.2 million to walk.

He’s paid players he’s signed $648.7 million in salary, while the
players he’s cut loose signed for $164.9 million.

The overall surplus value Williams has gained from his signings is
$13 million ($83,000 per player season, or $113,000 per player).

The locks of a champion.

Baby Steps, Bobby.

The players Williams has let go have produced -$62.7 million in value
for their new teams, an ugly figure gobbled up substantially by just two deals: Magglio Ordonez’s
seven-year, $99 million contract (producing -$52.2 million for the Detroit
Tigers) and Bobby Jenks’s two-year, $12 million deal (producing -$13.8 million
for the Boston Red Sox).

Even when parsing out returning White Sox and evaluating only outside players brought into Chicago, Williams’ record remains
consistent. He’s signed 77 outside players, who have played 86.6 seasons and
produced 56.7 WAR. The dollar value of that WAR comes to $222.5 million, so
$214 million salary paid leaves a surplus value of $8.5 million ($98,000 per
player season, $110,000 per player).

Two Generations Removed

I extended the survey to not only track how traded players fared
with opposing teams—after all, how else to determine who “won” a trade?—but to
what return a team got if they traded a former White Sox asset. For example,
Chad Bradford, acquired from the White Sox by the Oakland A’s, was eventually
dealt to the Red Sox for Jay Payton. So in looking solely at second-generation assets, Payton’s $6.7 million in value brought to
Oakland for Bradford counts for the A’s.

There have been 29 such deals by my count, around half of which
were “megatrades” of between five and 12 players that I didn’t attempt to extrapolate a value
lineage for. But of the others, former White Sox assets collectively brought
little return back to teams: 20.4 total player seasons, but a mere 1.1 total WAR
and a total surplus value of -$28.7 million.

PTBNL
Losses

Williams has lost the war of players to be named later. Of the
four significant PTBNLs (Miguel Olivo and Neal Cotts acquired by the White Sox,
Frank Francisco and John Ely dealt away) included in deals, the White Sox come
out behind in both WAR (-1.0) and surplus value (-$800,000).

2012
Report Card

Counting only Williams’ trades for Kevin Youkilis, Brett Myers and
Francisco Liriano, the White Sox have come out ahead thus far in more
spectacular fashion: 2.3 WAR and $3.6 million in surplus value.

No Deal

Danks gets on his horse, Toby Hall.

There are just two teams Williams has not made a trade with, at least one that
had major league ramifications: the Tigers and Tampa Bay Rays. The most
significant dealings between the two had mixed results: Williams letting
Ordonez walk to Detroit as a free agent (-$52.2 million in value for the
Tigers) and signing Toby Hall from the Rays (-$7.8 million for the White Sox).

Ken’s
Faves

Williams has made eight trades with the Cincinnati Reds in his
tenure, with a net WAR of -3.2 and net surplus value of -$2.3 million.

He’s made six trades with both Josh Byrnes of the Arizona
Diamondbacks/San Diego Padres and Walt Jocketty of the St. Louis Cardinals/Reds. Against Byrnes, Williams has won the WAR battle (1.5) but lost in surplus
value (-$13.6 million). The GM has fared better vs. Jocketty: 1.1 WAR and $7.7
million surplus value.

Interestingly, Williams didn’t make his first deal with either Jocketty
or Byrnes until five years into his tenure.

Evened
Out

Discounting one-time trade partners, there have been four teams
which have made essentially “even” WAR trades over time with Williams:

Boston has made six deals with Williams, netting the White Sox 0.1
WAR and $1.4 million in surplus value.

Toronto and Miami have made five deals with Chicago. Williams has
taken 0.1 WAR and $2 million in surplus value from the Blue Jays, while giving
up 0.1 WAR to the Marlins but taking $1.4 million in surplus value from them.

San Francisco has made three deals with the White Sox,
surrendering 0.3 WAR and $2.7 million in surplus value to Williams.

Six different GMs have battled Williams essentially to a tie:

Cashman, the vulture.

Brian Cashman of the New York Yankees has given up 0.4 WAR and
taken $15.9 in surplus value from the White Sox over four deals.

Larry Beinfest in Miami has made three deals with Chicago,
surrendering 0.3 WAR and $5.4 million in surplus value.

Kevin Malone and the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago have made
three swaps, giving up 0.1 WAR but taking away $3.3 million in surplus value.

Dave Dombrowski of the Marlins made two deals with the White Sox,
netting him 0.5 WAR and $1.1 million in surplus value.

Allan Baird of the Kansas City Royals dealt twice with the White
Sox, netting him 0.1 WAR and $5 million in surplus value.

And finally, Brian Sabean of the Giants has his three deals with
Chicago outlined above.

Fine
print: In many cases, exact details of cash considerations are unavailable, so
educated guesses were made to arrive at value judgments. Some player-for-considerations
deals have been skipped or omitted, as are players included in trades who never
contributed at the major league level. WAR data used courtesy of Baseball-Reference,
while yearly dollar/WAR values were
estimated primarily from Fangraphs
data.

About Poetry in Pros

Brett most recently logged a couple of beats at CSNChicago, first following the Blackhawks and covering their first Stanley Cup win in 49 years, then shifting to the South Side and the White Sox.

His sportswriting career began right before the turn of the century, first as an editor for Basketball News and later editing Basketball Digest and Bowling Digest. He has written for Baseball Digest and MLB Trade Rumors, as well as the Chicago White Sox and MLB World Series programs, as well as Slam, Hoop, Inside Stuff, Courtside, Rinkside, and numerous NBA game programs. He has been featured in ESPN the Magazine, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Baltimore Sun and Crain's Chicago Business, and on Comcast Sports Net, NBA-TV, NHL.com, MLB.com, WLS-TV, WGN-TV and the BBC. He's also written features for the NBA Finals and NBA All-Star Game programs.

Brett is the author of the essential baseball reference work 'The Wit and Wisdom of Ozzie Guillen.' When Ozzie first saw the book, on Opening Night 2006, he cracked wise to those in his manager's office, asking, "What's wisdom?" To which owner Jerry Reinsdorf replied, "Don't worry, Ozzie. You don't have any."

A lifelong Chicago sports fan, the first game Brett attended was on Dec. 4, 1976, watching the Bulls snap a (still) franchise-record 13-game losing streak and setting in motion the playoff run that would come to be defined as the Miracle on Madison. At Brett's first White Sox game on June 4, 1977, Richie Zisk of the South Side Hit Men homered over the roof at Comiskey Park at a time when the feat was as rare as a no-hitter. Brett's first Chicago Bears game was on Oct. 7, 1984, when Walter Payton broke the all-time NFL career rushing mark.

More than anything, however, Brett is a baseball and a White Sox fan, having seen hundreds of games over his lifetime, including a walk-off grand slam by Carlos Lee to defeat the Cubbies, the infamous Michael Barrett sucker-punch on A.J. Pierzynski, a then-season record home run by Oscar Gamble in 1977, Bobby Thigpen's 50th season save in 1990, and the classic Blackout tiebreaker win over the Twins in 2008. There have been many pilgrimages to see the team, including a September 1990 drive up from Texas to see a final series at Comiskey Park, an April 1991 flight to watch the otherwise-unmentionable first game at the then-New Comiskey Park, outrunning a snowstorm to see the White Sox be whitewashed in a late September game at Kauffman Stadium, and a jaunt down to the Hovering Sombrero in 2005 to catch the club take on the Tampa Bay Rays.

His highlight as a fan is, of course, witnessing the entire home run of 2005 White Sox playoff victories, including the two extraordinary wins over the Houston Astros at USCF that spurred a World Series sweep. More recently, he took in Mark Buehrle's perfect game in 2009, during which Brett made the boldest prediction imaginable—not of an eventual perfect game, but a Josh Fields grand slam! Brett has watched games in every major league city.

Brett graduated from Texas Christian University with a Journalism and English degree and came thisclose to finishing his English master's at Kansas State University while teaching composition to disinterested agribusiness majors. He's won a number of writing awards in areas as varied as poetry, fiction, features, news reporting and opinion writing. Brett lives in Florida with his incomparable wife, Angelique.

Poetry in Pros Trivia

Now that you know a little bit about Poetry in Pros writer Brett Ballantini, see how you score below. True or false, Brett:

Believes that the ABA saved professional basketball.

Borrowed the title of the first draft of his master's thesis from a Camper Van Beethoven song.

Co-founded and played in a band called Ethnocentric Republicans, who once shared a bill with 15-minutes-of-fame grunge rockers The Toadies.

Considers nachos piled high with jalapenos as his go-to concession food.

Gave a Crunch bar to then-Nestle spokesman Shaquille O'Neal before their first interview together in Milwaukee. Later saw an empty Crunch bar wrapper in Shaq's locker.

Gave three photographs from his personal collection to the Chicago Bulls for their "walk of fame" leading to the locker room at the United Center.

Had four front teeth.

Has appeared in one movie, in which he was murdered when Albert Einstein slammed his head in a door.

Has appeared on the cover of a magazine with a circulation of 100,000. As Santa Claus. Bowling.

Has attended just three games in Wrigley Field as a fan. One was to see the Chicago Sting.

Has been a vegetarian for 30 years.

Has been doused by Bill Veeck's outfield shower in two different decades, in two different White Sox parks.

Hasn't cried over a game since Tito Landrum crushed that homer off of Britt Burns in October 1983.

Has worked for at least seven publications that are no longer in business.

Kissed the Minnie Minoso statue in the outfield concourse at Sox Park on the cheek as a good-luck gesture before Game 1 of the 2005 World Series.

Caught a foul ball while covering a preseason game from the roof of Tempe Diablo Stadium. On his birthday.

To Wit:

"When I build a fire under a person, I do not do it merely because of the enjoyment I get out of seeing him fry, but because he is worth the trouble. It is then a compliment, a distinction; let him give thanks and keep quiet. I do not fry the small, the commonplace, the unworthy."